personal and professional musings from a Jesus-loving, center-right chica navigating life and faith in the ELCA ("takin' this bound conscience thing out for a test drive")

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

HO-ly Hannah!

Wow....

Well thanks to all the friends who have sent me love and hugs in emails, phone calls, text messages, and in person the last few days. Apparently my last post made me sound like I'm about to jump off a cliff. I'm really not.

Looking back over the last few things I've written about my own personal life, I realize that they all seem really dark and depressing. And yes, I've been on a giant emotional roller coaster for much of this year, and especially this semester. But things are actually good, too.

It's so "CPE" to say that I've been doing a lot of "hard emotional work", but the truth is, I have. This semester I'm taking a class on the Holy Spirit, which I think is going to qualify as the best class I have taken in seminary. Over and above Genesis to Revelation, and Gospel and Epistles of John. And they were awesome.

But one of the primary themes of this Holy Spirit class is just how freeing the Holy Spirit is. For better or worse, I'm one of the good girls, and I can recite "live not by the letter but by the Spirit" and "for freedom Christ has set you free" and "you have been saved by grace through faith, and this is not your own doing" backwards and forwards blah blah blah. But apparently I forgot that it applies to me. I am realizing just how much I have let "the flesh" - the things of this world - determine who I am and what I want and what I need and what I "should" be doing, rather than living in the freedom of the Holy Spirit.

So I think part of my darkness and depression probably stems from remorse over that, and processing how to fix it now that I know it's a problem. It's sort of like doing a deep-clean on a closet, or something: it might actually get worse before it gets better, even though you're on the right track. And honestly, even as I write this, and try to live into that freedom that I have in Christ to be who I am, I can almost feel the spiritual warfare going on inside my brain. The collision of the old age and new age, duking it out for my concentration and allegiance. But no more!

About Me

I am a walking dialectic, so I suppose it's good that I'm a Lutheran. I'm into the Bible, geeky theology stuff, and staying up past my bedtime. I'm definitely "my own person" and I ask lots and lots of questions. I feel like I just wrote a personal ad.

Beautiful and Important

"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross". ~ Colossians 1:15-20